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Early jazz from Duke Ellington - A swing jazz composer and entertainer
December 20th, 2008 | by Tom |
If you’re what people usually call a “serious” composer, what you have done is a theme and variations, and you publish it as part of an opus - or a big piece of work. But if you’re a swing musician, you may not publish it at all; just play it, making it a little different each time according to the way you feel, letting grow as you work on it
Duke Ellington, in TOPS Magazine, 1938
The last 2 months of 1926 marked the moment when Duke Ellington’s music came of age. His band’s debut on the Vocalion record label that November put a marker down that a new jazz voice of maturity and imagination had arrived, with original and creative ideas about how to use a large jazz band, and which raised the question Ellington himself posed about the balance of his work between the “serious composer” and the “swing musician”.
Duke Ellington - Satin Doll
Late 1926 was also the start of Ellington’s regular and long-lived association with the agent, publisher, and sometime songwriter Irving Mills, who was to play a major part in deciding that Ellington would be presented to the world as an jazz artist every bit as much as an entertainer.
By this time, Ellington was already twenty-sever years old and had been active on the New York music scene for some years, establishing himself as a talented stride pianist who accompanied several blues singers on disc. As a bandleader he had played, since 1924, at the Kentucky Club (and its forerunner the Hollywood Club) on West 49th Steet in Manhattan. His recording career as a leader also stretched back to 1924, although his early discs include very little that pointed to to his future artistic and commercial success.
Edward Kennedy Ellington was an urbane, middle-clas African-American from Washington D.C., who had a musical family and had taken piano lessons, but he was largely an autodidact when it came to composition and bandleading.
He had acquired his name “Duke” while working as a teenage soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe in Washington, where his pride in his appearance gave him something of a regular air, which he retained throughout his life.
As a boy, Ellington has more direct contact with the African-American musical world than did Fletcher Henderson, although he came from a similarly comfortable social background. The young Ellington was a regular attendee at Washington’s Howard Theater, where he witnessed many touring vaudeville acts performing a wide range of music.
He also came into contact with visiting pianists like Eubie Blake, Luckey Roberts and James P. Johnson, as well as others who hailed from his hometown, like Claude Hopkins.
Tags: big bands, duke ellington
December 20th, 2008 | by Tom |
If you’re what people usually call a “serious” composer, what you have done is a theme and variations, and you publish it as part of an opus - or a big piece of work. But if you’re a swing musician, you may not publish it at all; just play it, making it a little different each time according to the way you feel, letting grow as you work on it
Duke Ellington, in TOPS Magazine, 1938
The last 2 months of 1926 marked the moment when Duke Ellington’s music came of age. His band’s debut on the Vocalion record label that November put a marker down that a new jazz voice of maturity and imagination had arrived, with original and creative ideas about how to use a large jazz band, and which raised the question Ellington himself posed about the balance of his work between the “serious composer” and the “swing musician”.
Duke Ellington - Satin Doll
Late 1926 was also the start of Ellington’s regular and long-lived association with the agent, publisher, and sometime songwriter Irving Mills, who was to play a major part in deciding that Ellington would be presented to the world as an jazz artist every bit as much as an entertainer.
By this time, Ellington was already twenty-sever years old and had been active on the New York music scene for some years, establishing himself as a talented stride pianist who accompanied several blues singers on disc. As a bandleader he had played, since 1924, at the Kentucky Club (and its forerunner the Hollywood Club) on West 49th Steet in Manhattan. His recording career as a leader also stretched back to 1924, although his early discs include very little that pointed to to his future artistic and commercial success.
Edward Kennedy Ellington was an urbane, middle-clas African-American from Washington D.C., who had a musical family and had taken piano lessons, but he was largely an autodidact when it came to composition and bandleading.
He had acquired his name “Duke” while working as a teenage soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe in Washington, where his pride in his appearance gave him something of a regular air, which he retained throughout his life.
As a boy, Ellington has more direct contact with the African-American musical world than did Fletcher Henderson, although he came from a similarly comfortable social background. The young Ellington was a regular attendee at Washington’s Howard Theater, where he witnessed many touring vaudeville acts performing a wide range of music.
He also came into contact with visiting pianists like Eubie Blake, Luckey Roberts and James P. Johnson, as well as others who hailed from his hometown, like Claude Hopkins.
Tags: big bands, duke ellington
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